Part 17

The porch is not one straight, unbroken line like the porches of so many summer hotels in the east. It has a few graceful curves in it and from it you may watch the craft sailing by--coast steamers to and from San Francisco and other ports. The golden sunsets you may see from this porch are such as no artist could represent. It is not within the possibilities of paint and canvas to reproduce such gorgeous scenes. On a clear day without the aid of a glass Catalina island is visible thirty miles away.

The dining-room of the hotel juts out in a northerly direction and has windows on three sides. From a distance it looks as if it might have been an after-thought in construction, but the architect planned it this way, to give what was most desired--light, ventilation and pleasing views, and he succeeded.

Two hundred and sixty can sit down to dinner at one time.

There are no loose wardrobes nor clothes presses; all the bedrooms have closets built in the walls. Every room is supplied with hot and cold water running into marble basins. Every room has a tiled fireplace in color and design to match the carpet, and what is also worthy of mention, the furniture in the bedrooms is not duplicated, nor are the carpets.

The drinking water is from an Artesian well. It has been analyzed and pronounced pure. The plumbing seems to have been done in a careful manner, and the question of sewerage need give nobody concern. The hotel stands on a _mesa_. The refuse goes through an iron pipe and empties into the sea half a mile from the house.

There are no better fishing grounds on the coast, so they say. If you are lucky with the line you may catch bonita, Spanish mackerel, baracouta, smelt and yellow tails, whatever they are.

The circular of the Redondo Hotel as to rates merely says, “same as any first-class hotel.” This is hardly in accordance with the facts, as I see them. The terms at the Redondo are from three to four dollars per day, while hotels in the east, of the same class, charge from four to five dollars. Why such low rates obtain in California hotels is something I intend to find out before I leave the State. For illustrated circulars address Redondo Hotel Co., Redondo Beach, Cal.

PASADENA.

PASADENA, March 10.

People who care more for comfort than for great “style,” who prefer a quiet, home-like, family house to one of noise and bustle, those who are seeking health, pure air and out-door life with grand views rather than the music, dancing and entertainments of a fashionable hotel may jot down as a memorandum “The Painter Hotel, at Pasadena, Cal,” thirty-five minutes by train from Los Angeles and fifteen minutes by “free ’bus” from passenger station.

It is a new house, was built in ’88; it accommodates seventy-five boarders, and is owned and kept by J. H. Painter’s Sons. The house is airy, the bedrooms are comfortably (not luxuriously) furnished, the parlor is pleasant, the class of guests select, the table is well provided, and at once, let me say, ere the important fact escapes me, the rates are remarkably low for the nice appointments and good fare supplied--only $2.50 per day for transient guests, and from $12.50 to $17.50 per week to season boarders, for people come to stay for a month or so--some spend the whole winter here. The house is open the year round, it being pleasant in summer as well as in winter. It is a mountainous district, and the ocean, from which come soft winds in summer, is only thirty minutes’ distant in a south and southwesterly direction.

Yes, and here are two more facts--Pasadena is one thousand feet above the sea, and the Painter Hotel, which is one and a half miles from the centre of the town, stands on the highest point hereabouts.

The grounds comprised in the property include ten acres, upon which the owners grow their own fruits for the table--peaches, apricots, raisins, prunes, etc.

Do you want to visit the town? Street cars pass the door of the Painter. And if you want a view it will “pay” you to climb up to the roof of the hotel, where there is an observatory. Three miles off is the Raymond Hotel, plain to your view in this clear atmosphere. On one side is the San Bernardino range of mountains, on the other the Sierra Madre range. You may see San Jacinto, ninety miles away, also Wilson’s Peak, upon which the new observatory, with its powerful lens, is to be placed; and beautiful San Gabriel valley is spread out immediately beneath you, a feature of which, at this writing, are acres of large, orange-hued poppies, so bright that you could almost imagine them aflame, especially if the wind is blowing, thus giving vibration to the thin, delicate leaves.

The drives are a most delightful feature:--to the city proper, with its wide avenues of beautiful residences, to San Gabriel mission, and to “Lucky” Baldwin’s ranch, a pleasant afternoon drive.

Those who are planning a winter or spring tour will thank me for suggesting a visit to the Painter House, but if people demand “style,” if they would dance to orchestral music; if they demand great size in a dining-room and grandeur in the drawing-room, and they are willing to pay for it, all these are also obtainable here, or rather at East Pasadena, which is only three miles distant; eight miles from Los Angeles. And the price, $4.50 per day, $21 to $28 per week, is reasonable considering what you get for the money.

Reference is made to the great Raymond Hotel, which was built in 1886, where they have a bar, as well as billiards and bowling; elevator, electric lights, a reception-room, music-room, grand parlor, and a dining-room which accommodates three hundred persons. From your seat at table you see “Old Baldy” looming above the clouds eleven thousand feet and snow-covered ten months out of the twelve, looking like a great sugar-loaf and recalling the Jungfrau, near Interlaken, Switzerland.

Like the dining-room of its modest neighbor, the Painter Hotel, every table in the Raymond is decorated daily with fresh flowers plucked from the hotel grounds--this is “winter,” mind you. The grounds of the Raymond cover a space of fifty-four acres, so there is no lack of fruit (oranges, lemons, etc.), to say nothing of the roses, blue bells, honeysuckle, dandelions, heliotropes and violets which may be picked _ad libitum_--if you don’t regard the painted signs.

A view from one of the Raymond’s verandas is not much unlike that from the front steps of the Grand Hotel in the Catskills, only the former is far more extensive.

The proprietor of the Raymond is W. Raymond, of Raymond’s Vacation Excursions, Boston, and the manager is C. H. Merrill, of the Crawford House, in the White Mountains. The post-office address is East Pasadena, Cal.

Orange Grove avenue and Marengo avenue and the paths in the grounds leading to the houses are lined with luxurious fan palm trees, interspersed with great cacti and not a few century plants, which it is proven here bloom much oftener than once in a hundred years. The calla lily, that delicate plant which is so tenderly cared for in the East that the flower is wrapped in cotton wool, here grows in such profusion that it is used for hedges. You will see fields of “callas” at Pasadena, raised for shipment to large cities. The whole of Pasadena is like one immense garden, a garden city indeed.

PASADENA COTTAGES.--You would scarcely credit it, so I won’t tell you, that some of the “cottages” in this new place are as large and elaborate as those on the New Jersey coast, between Seabright and Elberon, and some of them would not look out of place alongside the grand Newport “cottages.”

Mr. Kernaghan, editor of the _Pasadena Star_, has a fine home here. One of the prettiest places belongs to and is occupied by Mrs. Kimball, the widowed daughter of Rufus Hatch of New York.

Charles Frederick Holder, formerly of New York, came out here six years ago for his health, and having obtained it has made this his home. He has a cozy cottage on Orange Grove avenue in which is his study, where you may find him at his ease, wearing a short black velvet coat or smoking jacket.

Mr. Holder is a journalist and littérateur, a frequent contributor to current magazines and leading newspapers. He has published two or three brochures on Pasadena. One of his contributions concerning this section was an illustrated article which appeared in _Harper’s Weekly_. It was entitled “The Rose Tournament,” and described a beautiful ceremony which takes place here annually, on New Year’s day. Mr. Holder’s style is finished and scholarly and his language choice, with no waste of words. Being a man of cultivated taste, with a rare poetic fancy, he is at home here, when treating of this lovely country with its wealth of fruits and flowers.

Among others who have built houses and who occupy country seats at Pasadena is Governor Markham, of California. A Mr. Nelmes has a lovely ten-acre place, and with it a generous heart. A sign placed conspicuously outside his gates reads as follows: “All are welcome to drive through these private grounds and groves. Eastern tourists are each invited to pluck one orange.”

Near the Painter Hotel are many beautiful homes owned by “Eastern people.” One is owned by Dr. Green, of Woodbury, N. J., another luxurious place is that of Mr. McNally, of the publishing house in Chicago of Rand, McNally & Co.

Professor Low, of Norristown, Pa; J. W. Scoville, a Chicago banker, and E. T. Hurlburt, a capitalist of Chicago, are owners of fine estates, and of less notable places there are owners in Pasadena by the hundred.

It strikes you as rather odd to find winter and summer together, hand in hand as it were. At your feet flowers; raise your head and snow on the mountain peaks is visible to the naked eye.

The one-horse cars which ply between Pasadena and East Pasadena, California, like some of the one-horse cars of some other cities, have a driver who acts as conductor also, but the driver in the Pasadena cars serves as collector as well. There is no automatical nor mechanical contrivance to receive the fares, nor is there any way of recording them. When a passenger gets on the driver leaves the front platform, and, letting the horse take care of himself, or handing the reins to a front-platform passenger, he runs back and collects the new fare. There are not many cars on the line--one starts only every half hour--and as most of the passengers are through passengers, and few get on or off between the two points named, the animal being very docile, there is no difficulty in one man doing the whole work. The driver getting on and off his car reminds me of the elevator in Philp’s Hotel, Glasgow, which will not budge upward if there are as many as four or five people in the car. The man who runs it gives the rope a pull, on the ground floor, then leaves the car, walks up the stairs, getting up to the second or third flight in ample time to give the rope another pull and to let the passengers out.

Some people talk of the winter months in California as “the rainy season.” This may be an old story, told of what was the case years ago. It certainly is not true to-day. Examining the records, I find that from January 5 to February 1 of this year there was no rain at all in Pasadena, and in all of that time there were but two cloudy days--January 23 and January 28.

I have been in Southern California now for about three weeks and have seen it rain only on two days and one night--two days in Los Angeles and one night, for one hour, at Coronado Beach.

I don’t advise you to throw away your umbrella, as did a tourist from Colorado when coming here, but my experience would show that there is very little use for such an article in Southern California, even in what used to be called “the rainy season.”

LOS ANGELES

LOS ANGELES, March 17.

If you are going from Los Angeles to San Diego, or vice versa, don’t go by boat unless you have a great affection for the sea. First, you must change at San Pedro, from cars to boat; second, the waterway occupies much more time; but what is most important, if you go by rail, over the Sante Fé route, you get magnificent and diversified views of the ocean, close views of foot hills and distant views of snow-capped mountains. You pass through a fertile country, see picturesque cottages, large sheep and cattle ranches, and great rifts in the mountains that make you smile when you think of “gaps” in the east, which are so widely advertised. The train skirts the edge of the sea for scores of miles and recalls similar scenic features of land and water which you admire in travelling from Aberdeen to Ballater over the “Great North of Scotland Railway,” a pretty little road with a big sounding name. If you should have to stop on a switch, or for a “heated journal,” for five or ten minutes, you can step off the car platform and in a few minutes you can gather a large bouquet of sweet, wild flowers, among them fragrant “mignonette” as they call it here. Southern California might well be named the land of flowers, and this branch of the Sante Fé is entitled to be called by that much abused term, picturesque.

FLORIDA ORANGES “BEATEN.”--I wrote last season about some Florida oranges which Mr. Orvis showed me at the Windsor Hotel, Jacksonville. The largest of them, if I remember aright, measured thirteen inches in circumference and weighed twenty-three ounces. I asked, “who can beat these?” They are “beaten.” This morning I weighed an orange in Los Angeles which turned the beam at thirty-three ounces and which measured nineteen and one-quarter inches. This particular orange was light for its size, because it was not quite ripe nor “full” when picked. It came from George Bunce’s grove (pray do not print this “grave”) at Rivera, a small town nine miles from Los Angeles. The grove was only set out in 1888. All the oranges on the tree from which this one was picked were as large and as heavy as the one described, but there were only three of them.

All the ticket brokers’ offices, all the fruit stores, segar shops and all the shops of small traders and of places patronized by men have their doors and windows thrown open during business hours. No “protection” from the weather is needed. It is never cold enough for closed doors or windows in the daytime. Nor are some of these places of business closed even at night except by strong iron-wire netting covering the fronts of the stores. This open feature strikes a visitor as very strange at first, but one soon becomes accustomed to it. All through the winter open street cars are used.

Three years ago, when the Los Angeles boom was at its height, the foundation was laid near Main street for what was intended to be the largest hotel in the United States. There it stood and there it stands to-day (the foundation), the bricks appearing just one foot above the ground level. These bricks enclose a space of two acres. Pullman, of sleeping-car fame, was one of those interested, and he says that the idea has not been entirely abandoned. The idea may yet exist but the open lots and the brick foundation look very lonesome. Meanwhile Mr. O. T. Johnson erected a very handsome hotel, The Westminster, on the corner of Main and Fourth streets, which will accommodate two hundred and fifty guests. The site of the Westminster is choice; the house contains all the modern improvements; it is well furnished and well patronized.

As I write, in my bedroom of the Westminster Hotel, looking north I can see, without rising from my seat, great high mountains covered with snow. They present a most beautiful picture in this clear atmosphere, with the sun shining upon them.

That “cranky critic,” as the New York _Hotel Gazette_ calls Max O’Rell, would be suited at the Westminster Hotel. O’Rell complains because in American hotels guests have regular seats; that each person upon entering the dining-room is not allowed to sit just where he pleases. The contrary is the rule in the hotel mentioned. A notice is prominently posted near the elevator which reads: “Positively no seats reserved in the dining-room.” The waiters are young, intelligent American girls of a good class, some from New York and some from Nebraska, all uniformed in white. They look neat and clean, are alert to take an order and quick in serving it.

Strawberry short-cake was part of the dessert at to-day’s luncheon in the Hotel Westminster. Fresh-picked strawberries are served every morning for breakfast. Not a dozen or two small, hard berries, such as I have seen served for a “portion” at hotel tables in Florida during February, but a saucerful for each guest of large, ripe berries that have a delicious flavor. Strawberry ice-cream was on the dinner menu--the cream made, not from “strawberry flavoring,” but of the honest fruit. Fresh peas and Lima beans figure on the bill, also oranges in profusion, picked from the groves hard by.

All the way between New Orleans, La., and Los Angeles, Cal., on the Southern Pacific railroad, you pay five to ten cents each for oranges; as soon as you reach Los Angeles, boys with baskets of the golden fruit swarm about the cars crying out, “Oranges, three for a nickel, six for a dime.” If you have a little patience you will hear, “Oranges, eight for a dime,” and if you wait till the train is about to start you can get ten for a dime. Possibly after you are out of hearing they are sold at ten cents a dozen.

In the cars of the Southern Pacific railroad that run between Los Angeles and the seaport town of San Pedro appears this printed notice: “WARNING:--Passengers are hereby warned against playing games of chance with strangers, of betting on three card monte, strap, or other games. You will surely be robbed if you do.”

THE CALIFORNIA.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 1, 1891.

California being one of the largest of these United States, the Californians thought that their chief city should have large hotels, so they built in San Francisco the Baldwin House, the Lick House, the Occidental and larger than any of these, the Palace Hotel, “larger than any hotel in existence,” it is claimed. Whether this claim is well founded or not, the Palace is large enough to suit the most extravagant American ideas. It occupies three acres of ground. It has seven hundred and fifty-five bedrooms; number of rooms all told, ten hundred and fifteen.

But with the growth of the State and the growth of culture and good taste, Californians and tourists from other States demanded something above and beyond mere size; and so a few months ago was erected “The California.” There are several “California Hotels” in San Francisco, in fact, an old house directly opposite the California now calls itself “The New California,” probably because the name is new. So many houses with names near alike give trouble to the Post-office people, but the title of the house of which I write is simply “The California.”

It is in a central and accessible part of the city--in Bush street, just off Kearney street, which runs nearly parallel with Market, being not far from the _Chronicle_ building, which with its great clock tower running up hundreds of feet in the air, serves as a finger or sign-post from many parts of the city.

The front is of cedar-colored sandstone, and with its modern, low-arched entrances and high, round towers, is uncommonly pleasing to the eye. There are one hundred and forty rooms in the house, and it is nine stories high, the higher floors being most desirable. The light is better as you ascend, and the views from the windows across the bay and the Golden Gate are a constant delight. From my bedroom window I can plainly see the graceful movements of the white squadron, which, with the green hills in the far distance make a magnificent picture. The California was erected by “an estate,” and the estate considered not the expense. They started out with the idea to build a hotel as near perfection as possible, and they succeeded.

Every known precaution is taken against fire. It was the intention from the first to build a house as proof against fire as men, money and materials could make it. Scientists were consulted as to sanitation and plumbing, and to these points special thought and attention were given, Such luxurious fittings in marble and silver plate I have never seen surpassed, if equalled; not even in my recent ten-thousand-mile tour through the South and West, and I have visited hotels that cost all the way from one to three millions of dollars.

Instead of marble and brass, which are used so freely in large American hotels, rare and beautiful woods prevail in decorating the interior of the new house. The ground floor is finished in quartered oak, the second in bird’s-eye maple, the third and fourth in sycamore, the fifth and sixth in red birch, and the seventh, eighth and ninth in oak. The wood was cut, carved and polished especially for the building, and is of the most exquisitely beautiful grain.

Max O’Rell would be pleased. Printed rules are not posted on all the bedroom doors: it would be an act of vandalism to thrust a nail into hard wood of such high polish and beautiful grain. The furniture and carpets harmonize in colors and are very rich: there seems to have been no thought of economy. The bedrooms are furnished as you would furnish your own apartment, provided you had a large bank account. They only lack pictures, mantel ornaments and such dainty etceteras, as you find, for instance, in the bedrooms of Long’s Hotel in London, to give them a finished, homelike and elegant air.

Some idea as to the extent to which this wood decoration is carried, may be gained when it is told that the wood used to decorate the parlor and music-room cost six thousand dollars, and yet they are small apartments when compared, say, with those of the Windsor Hotel, New York.

The music-room adjoins the parlor, and is only separated from it by a pair of portières. It is circular, with a frescoed dome. It is only twenty-four feet in diameter; but a veritable bijou is this music-room. It has tables and a cabinet of onyx, pieces of statuary and bronze, two piano lamps and a pedestal upon which stands a vase decorated with scenes painted by a French artist. The vase itself is three feet high. There are two semi-circular upholstered recesses in this room curtained in front. Occasionally these recesses are put to a very good use. I have seen young couples, a modern Claude and Pauline, engaged in very close conversation behind the curtains, whispering “soft nothings” to each other. “Soft” without doubt were the words spoken, and, so far as I heard, they amounted to nothing.

In the central front wall of this room there is a window, and pendant in this window is a colored lamp in which electric light is continually burning. There are similar lamps hanging in each of the cozy recesses--the scene, with its Moorish surroundings, reminding you of an Oriental synagogue, in which there is a similar lamp, and in which, according to Jewish custom in public places of worship, the light is never allowed to go out. Of electric lamps, there are twenty-five hundred in the house.

There is a ladies’ waiting-room which is strictly reserved for ladies; there is a ladies’ billiard-room, as well as one for gentlemen; there is a banqueting-room for public dinners at the top of the house, and at the bottom of the house there are cellars which contain a stock of choice wines valued at twenty thousand dollars.

The European plan is gaining in popularity in this country. When you proceed to write your name on the register at the Palace Hotel the clerk asks, “European or American plan?” At the California no such question is propounded; it is kept entirely on the European plan.